What to do about "Nuclear Waste"…

Readers of this blog know how to use LFTR technology to avoid making long-lived nuclear waste in the first place, but what about the waste we’ve already got? I posted this on NEI Nuclear Notes some time ago but thought I ought to post it here as well:

But before you read it, this article might serve as a very good introduction to the problem:

1. Shut down Yucca Mountain and devote the funding in the waste fund to the development of liquid-chloride and liquid-fluoride reactors. Chloride reactors would be used to destroy transuranics and breed U233 from thorium. Fluoride reactors would start with U233 and thereafter consume only thorium without producing transuranics.

5. Breed U233 from thorium during the destruction of TRUs in the chloride reactor and use them to start thermal-spectrum, fluoride reactors that use thorium as an essentially unlimited energy supply.

Such a scheme would destroy long-lived waste while transitioning to a fuel source (thorium) that does not produce the transuranics in the first place. Plus it would put this “nuclear waste” issue to bed once and for all.